Love in the time of Zika

About this book

"Love in the Time of Zika examines the transformation of reproductive politics spurred by the Zika public health emergency between 2015 and 2017. The Zika virus, which spread to humans through mosquitoes, was directly linked to fetal microcephaly and sexually transmitted disease, thus becoming a site of intense regulation of women's reproductive rights, female sexuality, and disability. The governments of El Salvador, Ecuador, and Colombia all asked citizens to refrain from reproduction for a period, while also limiting access to contraception and abortions. Paige Marie Patchin tracks the intense scrutiny and racialization of reproduction during this time, from the genetic modification of mosquitoes to worries about how the virus might threaten the future of humans. Patchin's analysis reveals how the panic about Zika revived older eugenicist fears about undeserving Third World children impinging on the future success of children in the developed world. Within this logic, the reproducing human body served as a privileged site for projects of social and ecological engineering. By examining contemporary scientific and policy interventions into human, non-human, and viral reproduction during Zika, Patchin shows how life on a heating planet requires new ways of thinking about our bodies' entanglement with the non-human world"-- Provided by publisher.